Wireless is the common theme of this year’s Macworld Expo. The new MacBook Air is fundamentally a wireless ultraportable. Time Capsule is a wireless backup hard drive. Apple TV lets you watch downloaded movies without a cable connection. And of course there is the iPhone.
The MacBook Air is three-quarters of an inch thick at its thickest point, features a 13.3-inch screen and a five-hour battery, and costs $1,799. The new notebook does not include an optical drive for playing CDs and DVDs and has limited cable inputs.The NY Times’ David Pogue loves it:
“But as a satellite machine for travelers, executives and presenters, it’s spectacular. Full-size screen, full-size keyboard and five-hour battery in three-quarters of an inch? Get psyched; this laptop is a razor-thin slice of heaven.”
Sun Announces Purchase of MySQL for $1 billion : Jonathan Schwartz, Rich Green, Marten Mickos (CEO of MySQL) and Greg Papadopoulos
“The future of the software business is service. Service, to Sun, is a $4 billion business. The old proprietary model of running closed software models is coming to a close. Customers have opted for free software to give them choice and avoid lock-in.” Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems CEO and President
Key Facts:
- Purchase Price: $1 Billion
- Size of Database Market: $15 Billion
- MySQL 2007 Revenues: $53 Million
- MySQL Share of Database Market: 1%
The drop, reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, reflects the growing shift of readers to the Internet, where newspaper readership has climbed, and also a strategy by many major papers to shed unprofitable or marginally profitable print circulation.
Among the nation’s largest newspapers, only a handful held their own or registered slight increases in overall paid circulation for the period from April 1 to Sept. 30. Most papers showed significant declines, both weekday and Sunday.
For the first time, the audit bureau released, along with the traditional circulation figures, numbers produced by Scarborough Reports that reflected the total number of readers, both in print and online this marks the first time that such an independent analysis has been done, providing a benchmark for future reports.
Executives noted that newspaper Web sites — unlike their print counterparts — drew a lot of young adults, who are sought by advertisers. But advertisers have generally not considered an online reader to be as valuable as a print reader, so it remains to be seen what effect the numbers will have.
The audit bureau report showed a 2.6 percent decline in paid weekday circulation from the year-earlier period for more than 500 newspapers whose figures were available, and a 4.6 percent drop on Sundays for more than 600 newspapers.
USA Today, the top-selling weekday newspaper in the country — — had a 1 percent increase in circulation, to about 2.3 million.
Wall Street Journal , fell 1.5 percent, to about 2 million
online subscriptions topped 1 million.
New York Times - lost 4.5 percent of its weekday circulation (to less than 1.04 million) and 7.6 percent of its Sunday circulation (to 1.5 million).
Weekday Circulation Figures
Los Angeles Times 780,000 Sunday 1.1 million.
New York Post 667,000
The Daily News 681,000
Randy Falco, who has been chief executive of AOL for nearly a year, is trying to emphasize the company’s growing operation that sells advertising on other Web sites. But he and Ron Grant, his powerful lieutenant, aren’t giving up on running AOL’s own sites.
They want to quickly move away from the vision of AOL.com as a portal that is simply a Web version of the all-in-one service AOL offered to its dial-up subscribers. Instead, they envision a network of loosely confederated Web sites, services, blogs and widgets that operate under a variety of names. Said Mr. Falco:
“Publishing is no longer just about the portal. We are going to be in as many different places as possible.”
Chris DeWolfe, chief executive of MySpace, in a press conference at the Googleplex, as reported by the New York Times.
OpenSocial is going to be become the de facto standard for developers right out of the gate. It will have access to 200 million users, making it way bigger than any other platform out there.
OpenSocial is designed to allow third-party companies and developers to create one set of programs that work across the Web’s most popular social networks. Facebook, in contrast, asks developers to tailor their programs for the network in its own proprietary format. The Google group is counting that developers will eschew that extra effort and want to avoid any lock-in with one social network.
Dell’s acquisition of web-storage company EqualLogic underlines the growing importance of this market segment. “Storage is the fastest part of Dell’s business,” Mr. Dell said in an interview. “There’s an explosion in the amount of data being consumed.”
Mr. Dell said data storage today accounted for about $2.4 billion of Dell’s revenue of about $57 billion, but that figure, he said, is growing rapidly.
EqualLogic, based in Nashua, N.H., is the leading provider of the Internet-based storage technology known as iSCSI. It makes it easier for businesses to store data by using existing networks rather than installing a costly new dedicated fiber optics network.
Mr. Dell said iSCSI technology represented the fastest-growing segment of the overall storage industry.Andrew Reichman, an analyst with Forrester Research, said the deal would help Dell meet the growing storage demands of small and medium-sized companies that typically lack dedicated technology employees to deal with complex storage issues.
The US Congress approved yesterday legislation to extend the moratorium on Internet access taxes, one day before it was set to expire. President Bush is expected to sign the measure, which received strong support in the House and the Senate. The tax ban was first approved in 1998 and has been renewed twice. The legislation also prohibits taxation of e-mail and instant messaging services that are not packaged with Internet access.
A coalition of consumer groups called yesterday for the creation of a do-not-track list that would permit internet users to opt out of behavioral tracking programs that use consumer data to deliver targeted ads. The groups seek disclosure notices saying that online ads resulted from behavioral tracking, and consumer review and editing of their ad network profiles. The proposal came as the Federal Trade Commission prepared for two days of meetings about online privacy.
In a separate development, the AOL division of Time Warner announced that it would enhance its system that allows users to remove themselves from tracking databases. Instead users would receive generic, not target, ads.
A number of websites and services have developed around the need to measure the flow of traffic over the internet. One of best-known is Internet Traffic Report. Here is their self-description:
The Internet Traffic Report monitors the flow of data around the world. It then displays a value between zero and 100. Higher values indicate faster and more reliable connections.
Read more
Analysts say that “cloud computing” is the future, but Microsoft just reported an excellent quarter based on its traditional products. Sales of personal computers rose 14-16 percent, the server software group showed strong sales, sales of Windows Vista and Office 2007 were stronger than expected, and its entertainment and devices group showed solid growth and rare profits. Said the NY Times:
The mainstay businesses are thriving, but, analysts say, future growth will increasingly depend on how well Microsoft can do in selling online advertising and developing Internet services.
Phone and video sharing site Webshots was sold by Cnet Networks for $45 million to American Greetings. Webshots has more than 7 million unique visitors each month.
Micro-blogging site Twitter has grown from 100,000 users in March, when it was named best blog at the Web Awards at the South by Southwest festival, to an estimated 500,000 users today.
Others are imitating. One count found over 100 “Twitter clones” in 12 countries. The most notable start-up is Pownce, started by Kevin Rose of Digg fame. Pownce is a private messaging and file sharing service that shares some characteristics with social networks like Facebook.
Nikon’s Coolpix camera can detect up to 12 faces in a picture, can lock on and track up to nine faces, and allows the photographer to select a specific face to focus on.
Apple will release the new version of it’s Mac OS X operating system tomorrow. A few key facts, as reported by The New York Times:
- Max OS X hasn’t experienced a single virus outbreak or spyware infestation in its six years.
- The new version is called “Leopard”
- Leopard includes 300 new features
- Most notable new features: an automated backup system called Time Machine and a document preview featured called Quick Look.
- Unlike Microsoft Windows, Leopard requires no serial number or activitation.
Yesterday’s Microsoft-Facebook deal made available new Facebook numbers. Here’s a quick Facebook overview:
- Members: 50 million
- New Registered Users Each Day: 200,000
- Founder: Mark Zuckerberg
- Zuckerberg’s Share of Company: 20%
- 2007 Projected Revenue: $125 million
- Company Valuation: $15 billion (based on Microsoft investment)
- Microsoft Investment: $240 million
- Microsoft Share of Facebook: 1.6%
